


The King of Fools

by pantan



Category: Joker (2019)
Genre: Dark Romance, Elections, F/M, First Kiss, Organized Crime, Politics, Spoilers, Violence, can we for a moment appreciate the absolute genius that was the movie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2020-11-26 09:43:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20928158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pantan/pseuds/pantan
Summary: The night the Waynes die, Gotham holds an unofficial election.Set after the events of Joker (2019).





	1. Election Night

**Author's Note:**

> but holy fuck this movie was so good

Arthur Fleck is dead.

He dies when Joker pulls the trigger that sends a bullet through Murray Franklin’s skull, showering his own name on the wall behind him in red. For a moment after the gunshot, tinnitus ringing in his head, there’s the absence of sound, and the whole studio is overwhelmed by ear-splitting silence.

The screams feel better than the bullet he planned to bite, even as he stares into the camera while the audience scatters like a pack of super rats. Arthur did get a funeral, after all. Even if it’s a messy one. This feels good. This feels free. Joker imagines himself dancing out of the studio, down the steps that lead to the grime and filth of Gotham’s streets. Splashing in the mud. He’s already spoken his mind to one camera, but hopes there will be thousands more on the way. Maybe he’ll try to make the news crews laugh, but Joker knows his career in comedy died with Penny Fleck. Even now, memories of his mother are fond. She tried her best, when her boyfriends weren't cracking Arthur's ribs and giving him black eyes. The memories trickled in one by one over the last day, until he recalls one in particular.

A nice man. He'd been the nicest so far. Smiled a lot. Made him feel safe. Told Arthur he'd like to be his father. Tied Arthur to the radiator and left him for dead, stealing the only wad of cash in the house and breaking his nose before he left, just for good measure.

Funny. Two people he thought could be family have hit that same spot.

His nose still hurts where Wayne punched it.

Fucking prick.

Plans to dance in the streets cut short. Before Joker knows it, he’s swarmed by officers in blue and shoved into the back of a cruiser. It’s not easy going on the road—the city is on fire. All because of him.  _ Marvelous _ . Then an ambulance smashes into the car and the world is spinning, there’s glass in his hair and his eyes and up his nose.

When Joker wakes there’s still smoke in the air. The stars are out—or maybe he’s seeing stars, because the pollution in this damn city is too bad for the real deal. Metal crinkles and pops beneath him—a car hood. The fire is fuzzy in the distance, and there are blobs of white and green everywhere. Joker blinks, adjusting to throbbing at his temple and copper in his mouth. His knees hurt, his back, throat, shoulders, but he can  _ see,  _ and for the first time in his life, he isn’t the only clown in Gotham.

They’re looking up at him, watching as he stands atop the mangled cruiser. Their faces are hidden behind cheap plastic masks, but their eyes are alive, and they’re shining. His people. His own. There are a thousand things he could do now, a million things he could say. But, Joker isn’t political. He lifts his arms, twists his hips, and just like that, responsibility falls into his lap as the crowd roars.

He’s liberated.

Joker doesn’t need his mother. He doesn’t need Thomas Wayne to be his father, nor Bruce to be his brother. He doesn’t need Sophie, and he’s beginning to realize Arthur never needed them either. He has a duty to fulfill the role given to him, because heroes are made and not born, and Gotham has just held the first election of the new age.

Long live the king.


	2. Reveries

Some days, Joker can’t get kissing Sophie out of his head.

He’s aware it never happened, of course. He’s aware that he really did kill those three pricks on the subway—but for what? To wipe part of the shitstain that is Gotham’s brightest out of his mind? To make the streets a little safer, a little better? Even then, Joker knows, as real as it felt to knock on the apartment door, cradle Sophie’s cheeks in his hands, taste her lips and the metallic tang of white paint, that it isn’t real. She never came to the comedy club to listen to his act. She didn’t hold his hand as his mother lay dying in the hospital. Arthur is an acquaintance to Sophie at best, and Joker is a perfect stranger. Criminal. Murderer.

But on nights like these, under the fluorescent lights of the asylum, Joker remembers kissing Sophie Dumond, and it hurts, because it wasn’t real. But what the fuck else is there to think about?

Joker isn’t allowed television while under the care of the doctors. He’s cut off from basic news, too, and with his mother dead and no father to speak of, visitations are lonely. Joker doesn’t care. He doesn’t need anyone. They dye his hair, darker than it was before he turned it green, wash the paint from his skin, hide the sharp objects from view, lock the doors. Joker doesn’t like being limited like this.

_ It’s enough to make a guy crazy. _

And then, after it feels like he’s lived a thousand lifetimes between white walls, something changes. Joker notices it one night, when he’s wide awake and even the air is still. It’s too quiet; the calm before a storm, the atmosphere charged, tense, electric. An explosion rocks the asylum, and Joker leaps to his feet.

A split second pause, then screams. The night nurse, Rochelle—he recognizes the lilt in her voice, but all at once it cuts off, and the hall falls eerily silent. Footsteps. Joker backs up against the wall, cool white stone slicing through the back of his padded jacket. He wrestles against the bonds, futile, hopeless, like the other hundred times he’s tried to rip out. Heavy boots on the floor, echoing closer. Far, far in the distance, sirens.

Joker grunts, snarls in frustration against the tight constraint of the jacket. The sound of the lock clicking freezes his blood. Joker drops to a crouch. He can take them. Whomever it is, he’ll jump on them and get his teeth in their throat before they can hurt him.

The door swings open. Close to the floor, Joker stares straight into the eyes of the intruder.

Gary cracks a smile. “Good to see you, Arthur.”

Gary pulls a knife from his pocket, and for a single, wild moment, Joker thinks he’ll stab his neck with it. Gary cuts the jacket off of him instead. Blood rushes back into Joker’s arms, and he’s free. He stares at his hands, Gary’s sharp laugh yanking him from shock.

“Your face says you don’t understand why I’ve come here to help you. Am I right? Why would I, after watching you kill poor Randall like that?”

Joker doesn’t answer. He stares at Gary, his hands, the open door of his asylum cell. Darkness, creeping in from the hall.

Gary leans in. “Randall was a prick. Scared me proper, what you did. But Arthur, Gotham is a hellhole without you. Thomas Wayne and his wife, dead. First major victory for blokes like us, but who are people without a leader?”

“Gary.”

A deeper, masculine voice draws Joker’s gaze up. There’s another man in the door, dressed in all black. He’s triple Gary’s height, with a face two times as mean, and one very large gun in his hands. They’re covered in red. His right cheek, too. Joker wonders if it belongs to Rochelle.

“We ain’t got time for tea. We collect the king and get out before every cop in the Gotham PD is breathing down our necks.”

“The king?” Joker balks at his own voice; it’s raw. Unused. He’s done nothing but laugh for who-knows-how-long.

Gary pats his shoulder. “Arthur. Look. You could have killed me the day you killed Randall. You didn’t. You said I was nice to you. That’s because, yeah, you kinda freaked me out a bit, and you were weird, but  _ unlike  _ Randall, you were a nice bloke. Shit’s bad out there, brother. You were on to something six months ago. You got a lot of fans, after that night the Wayne’s bit it, and they’ve been waiting for you to come back—a few of us got tired of waiting.”

“You’re here to get me out of the asylum?”

Gary grins. “Unless you’re thinking of stepping down, Your Majesty.”

Joker struggles back to his feet. His skin tingles—he’s cold. Heart pounding. He giggles, and the blood drains from Gary and his accomplices' faces. “Send in the clown.”

On the eve of his thirty-first birthday, Gary hands Joker a gun, and his reign over Gotham’s streets begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A more detailed summary, because I'm definitely not making this up as I go (COUGHHACKWHEEZE):
> 
> As the newly crowned King of Crime, The Joker is the face of Gotham's movement to give back the power to the people. He's a monarch that's more than a figurehead, and all know his reign. Sophie Dumond, a single mother trying to raise her daughter in uncertain times, finds herself in debt to the King of Crime. She never really knew Arthur Fleck. Will she ever know Joker?


	3. Rise to Power

Joker’s throne isn’t quite how he imagined.

For the first three months breathing the scummy air of Gotham city instead of the scummy air in Gotham Asylum, his throne is a worn-down couch in Gary’s two-bed one-bath coldwater flat, not three miles from the glue factory. The smell permeates everything; his nose, his clothes, his brain. He has to lie low, Gary tells him, until the panic from the city’s one-percent dies and every cop with a death wish stops looking for the man that shot Murray Franklin on live television.

Looking back on it, Joker’s lucky they deemed him insane enough to avoid prison, even if he might have preferred it to to the padded rooms and padded jackets of his soulless, godless cell. Of course, Joker thinks they got it wrong, after all.

He isn’t insane.

He’s never had more clarity in his life.

Gary’s prediction about public panic is more or less accurate; three months pass inside the rank, glue-fetor-saturated flat, and just like that, Gotham forgets. There’s a new late-night comedy show, one with a host that makes more tasteful jokes. The news reports the fate of Wayne Enterprises daily, but no one has seen or heard from the family’s sole survivor of the massacre. Bruce is being hidden, kept out of sight, and by extension, out of mind.

Joker doesn’t forget.

He doesn’t forget what it's like to have a fat fist smash into his face, white-hot pain shooting up his nose, bile rising in his throat. Fuck that. He doesn’t want to remember that, but he doesn’t want to forget.

It’s past midnight when Gary returns home with an armload of crinkled brown paper bags. Joker tugs his cigarette from his mouth, exhales the bitter smoke through his nostrils, flicks the butt through the open window. It lands in a puddle on the sidewalk, flickers, dies.

“Got you something, Arthur.”

The bags clank heavy atop the coffee table.

“I’ve had both ears to the ground for a good while, and I think it’s finally time to move up in your reign. The people are feeling unheard again, and the ritzy fat cats are pretending the last nine months never happened.”

Joker hooks a forefinger around the mouth of one bag, pulling it open to view the contents. He glances down at Gary. “More guns?”

“They’re a necessary tool for the new age. Loads of people have been trying to get their grubby hands on them. Randall and I shared an acquaintance. Big bloke. Bald. Sold a lot of guns like these. I never involved myself in that, understand, but times have changed. You’re what we need to take back the city  _ we  _ broke our backs to build.” Gary eyes him, lids narrowed. “You afraid to get shot, Arthur?”

“Not remotely.”

“Good. Too late to pussy out now, anyway. You’ve got fans, you know. Loads of them. And there are about seven that are willing to storm town hall tonight with you leading the charge.”

“Are we killing politicians, now?”

“You’ve already killed politicians, Arthur. The three piss ants from the subway were practically dripping with capitalistic ideology—they were born richer than us and therefore deserve more in life than us. This is just cleaning up the streets. Giving a voice to the people. You ain’t afraid of shooting a person again, are you?”

Joker takes a pistol from the mass of shiny black metal in the bag, checks the barrel. It’s fully loaded. It shuts with a  _ click _ . “I’d have to be crazy to find that scary, after what I’ve been through.”

“Good. I got something else for you, then.” Gary opens another bag, shoves into Joker’s open arm. Green box dye. A palette of white, blue, and red face paint. “There’s a suit in the closet, if you want it,” Gary says. “King’s gotta have a crown, after all.”

Once a handful of men and women in dark suits and pencil skirts lie dead in pools of their own blood, Joker’s throne gets a bit of an upgrade.

As it turns out, he has a lot more than just a few fans. Most of them are unsavory folk—criminals, scam artists, murderers, grave robbers. But Joker doesn’t view the world through that lens anymore; everyone seeks liberation in their own way, and he happens to be the lucky bastard that made a move first. Joker’s fans procure a larger apartment for both him and Gary, and a few months after that, a whole building.

The building happens to be the glue factory itself. One of the many people Joker personally shot between the eyes the night of the town hall massacre happened to be some bigwig that tipped company subsidies out of his ass. Now that he’s six feet deep in the Gotham Cemetery and there’s no one left to line the pockets of the glue CEO, it goes out of business in a heartbeat.

Joker hears they’re importing glue from Metropolis, now.

He speaks to himself a lot, these days. It scares Gary, he knows, even though Gary puts on a brave face. Joker notices the flash of discomfort in his eyes whenever Gary catches Joker whispering nonsense in the dead of night just to see how far the sound travels. A handful of people live in the factory with them, help them gut the machines and strip the walls for more space. After a couple days of keeping the windows open, even the stench starts to air from their clothes. They’re mostly vagabonds; Joker returns from his newfound work trimming the political fat and liberating the people to find his new family fucking and shooting up and slapping each other around. He doesn’t mind. Most nights, he watches it all from the metal observation balcony he and Gary have claimed as their own. Wonders what it would be like to celebrate with them. Get high with them. Fuck them.

Another month passes, and a year after he shot Murray Franklin in the head, something changes. Gotham starts to remember him.

Joker is thirty-two, finally eating enough to pass for average on the BMI, and happier than he’s ever been in his miserable, useless, meaningless life. Clips of his fateful appearance on the talk show circulate. Tags appear around the city, graffiti. White faces, green hair, golden crowns. Always beneath it, the words “LONG LIVE THE KING”. Dripping.

Six months and a larger body count later, Gary suggests it may be time to stop playing nice.

“They didn’t notice when we were killing their leaders and desecrating their place of political worship, but now that it’s been a year and a half since the public saw their king, folks are getting restless.”

Joker glances up from his copy of the daily paper, which sports a grotesque and blurry photograph of his own face, painted like a clown’s and grinning maniacally. Below them, the nightly moans and grunts of his more promiscuous family echo through the thin air. “Gary. I’ve murdered at least twenty people in the last nine months because you said it would help to free commoners from the thumb of Gotham’s aristocracy. I’ve danced through the goddamn streets like a freak on parade for press. I did all of this for you, and for them. And how am I rewarded? Not with love, not with more dreamers, but with a shitty tabloid photograph that didn’t even get my good side. What more do you want?”

Gary hops up beside Joker on the couch, tries to swing his legs onto the low table, can’t. He plays it cool, crosses them instead. “Been thinking about that, I have. Bloodbaths are fun, believe me—though I send you out on them without me. Don’t take it personal, mate, just can’t stomach the sight of blood like you can. Killing arseholes to take back the power is a worthy cause, don’t get me wrong. But brother, you’re eighteen months into your reign. We need to do something  _ for the people _ .”

A particularly throaty gasp from below catches both of their attention. Joker shifts his legs. “What do you have in mind?”

Gary grins. “You’ve heard of Robin Hood, yeah? Word is, Gotham City Bank is short-staffed these days, in the security department especially. It’d be like taking candy from a baby.”

The thought forces a chuckle from Joker’s throat. It evolves, quick, fast, into peals of laughter, giggles that send chills down his own spine. Distantly, he recalls that he still keeps his laminated card in the pocket of his vest. He doesn’t even know why. “Steal from the rich. Delicious, Gary, well done!”

Gary swallows, his smile tight like it always is when Joker laughs like this. “We’ll be in and out faster than they can blink. You’re overdue for a public appearance anyway, Arthur.”

“Better gather up the guns. It won't be a robbery without firepower.” Joker only laughs more, harder, until his throat hurts and he wishes he could stop. It's not gleeful. It almost never is. He's nervous, afraid for this, because the last time he was at the city bank… But no, that’s stupid. The city has gone to such shit even with his attempts to clean it up.

Sophie would have to be an idiot if she hasn’t moved away from Gotham, at this point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how tf did i write one goddamn oneshot and allow it to spiral out of control like this? lmao thanks to the amazing response I've received for this fic so far, im writing up a fucking storm and am floored by how many people have expressed that they enjoy it XD Love you, killers <3


	4. Amendment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eyyyy another one for you, killers

Joker pulls a rubber mask over his painted one. It’s a nice touch. A bit on the nose, perhaps.

A large pile of cold, hard cash will be even nicer, though not in the way it may once have been; Joker has money. It’s been trickling in over the last year and a half, ever since he sat waiting on a couch for something to happen. Gifts, Gary called them. Donations, sometimes. People that believed in him, in his cause. Sometimes they stole it. Some emptied out what meager savings they had. A few were even well off, and now some of those people live on the factory floor below him, wanting for nothing but freedom and carnal pleasure. It grew and grew, until Joker had so much dough he didn’t know what to do with it.

And yeah, okay, a few of the people he’s killed in the last nine months had their names put up in the kind of lists that pay large sums for said name’s imminent execution, so he’s made a few bucks that way. They already had targets on their backs, and now they’re right where they need to be.

He spends the money on food and pillows and lube, condoms and pregnancy tests and blankets. All for his family, because that’s what Arthur would have spent it on. That and skin mags, if he’s up to it. Adult Video Rental, if he’s feeling  _ really  _ nuts. It’s more money than he’s had his entire life, more money than he ever had in a green wig and shoes the size of boats. Even though he put his fucking heart and soul into that job, his dreams, his hopes. 

He resents that all it took to get rich was shooting the right asshole in the head.

Regardless of how, Joker likes money; having it, smelling it, touching it. Doesn’t matter if he knows how to spend it. It’s power, and it’s all it takes to make him somebody. So the bank isn’t a terrible idea, objectively. It’s an excellent one. More money means more power, which means a larger cause and more followers, new family to push out the one he never really had. Joker gets to be the hero that liberates riches from the needlessly rich, as God intended. That being said, he hasn’t quite decided if redistribution will play part in the heist.

Joker tucks a handgun into the right lapel of his jacket, then another on his left. He puts one into his trouser pocket for good measure, too.

“All right, Gary,” Joker announces, spinning around to present himself. “How do I look?”

“Like a bloody freak,” Gary deadpans. “It’s very wonderful.”

Joker cackles. There’s the flash of discomfort in Gary’s eyes again, gone like lightning.

“Your new friends will meet you at the rendezvous point, and then you’ll be back home a few hundred thousand dollars richer. God, I love American money—greener than a fuckin’ rainforest.”   
  


“Don’t wait up, sweetheart, I may not be home for dinner.”

Gary rolls his eyes and turns the page of his book.

An hour later Joker and seven masked men with tommy guns burst through the doors of Gotham Savings Bank to applause that sounds like screams and gasps. Joker fires six rounds into the air, the crack of each shot splitting the noise until there’s none left. He tosses the empty gun aside, pulls another from his suit, and aims the barrel right between the first teller’s eyes.

“I’m sure you know the drill.”

The teller is shaking harder than dead leaves in a stiff breeze. He sputters, behind the iron bars of the security gate, frozen.

Joker waves the gun in circles. “Hurry up, I don’t have all day.”

He squeaks, hits a release, and the drawer at his knees  _ dings  _ as it slides out. One of the masked men throws a burlap sack at the teller, grunts, “Fill it,” and one of the customers crouched on the dirty floor whimpers.

“No one has to be afraid,” Joker tells them, voice muffled through the rubber mask. “We’re not here to hurt you, unless you want us to.”

A sob echoes into the ceiling. It makes him feel more powerful than cash. The teller has filled the sack with all the green his drawer contains, and scurries to the next window to fill it more. The teller there, a woman with glasses so big they could be French windows, stumbles out of his way. Joker pauses, thinks. Points the gun at her. She screams. He drops the barrel by his side, and she sniffles, relieved. He points it at her again, another scream.

Joker cackles, and the temperature in the bank drops a degree.

Soon the sack is filled to the brim, and handed back over the counter to his friends, who give it to him. It’s fucking heavy, and smells like ink. Joker blinks down at sack, narrows his eyes at it. A deep, crimson flower blooms at the bottom of the fabric, drips steadily onto the cracked marble at his feet. For a single, wild moment, Joker thinks it’s blood.

“A dye pack,” he snarls, and his friends start shouting and brandishing their tommy guns, and the air is a cacophony of dissonant cries and pleads and shouts.

Then, a gunshot.

Joker ducks reflexively, throwing his arms over his head. The silence in the wake of the crack is unbearable; it doesn't even last two seconds.

“Fuck!”

A masked man crumples to the floor, clutching his gushing thigh. The bullet hit his femoral artery, and Joker's eyes widen; he’s a dead man. Joker spots the shooter—a man hiding beneath a mustache as thick as he is, huddled before two civilians clutching each other tightly. From the inside of the man’s pocket is the glint of a badge.

Someone snitched.

Joker doesn’t think doesn’t wait doesn’t breathe, pulls the trigger. The bullet digs into the undercover cop’s chest, wind rushes out his lungs so fast they compress, but no blood. The cop doesn’t collapse. He’s wearing a bulletproof vest.

Someone fucking  _ snitched. _

“Run!” Joker lobs the heavy bag of useless, dripping money at the cop. It smacks him in the face and falls to his lap, leaving a trail behind. Now it looks like he’ll die, red all over him, even if it isn’t true.

His friends break for the doors, but there and red and blue lights just beyond the frosted glass, and officers storm the floor of the bank like ants swarming around their queen. Joker is farthest from the doors but for a moment he can’t move. Bodies tackle rubber masks with cherry smiles to his feet, a flurry of hands ripping off false skins, shouting affirmations that  _ no, this one isn’t him, either,  _ and it hits him.

They don’t know which clown is the king.

Joker leans down, snatches an arm in his ironclad grip, and hauls a random bank patron to their feet. He holds them against his chest, presses the now five-bullet gun to their forehead, backs up to the far wall. His hostage trembles beneath his hands, the smooth touch of a padded jacket on his skin. The cops notice him, then, aiming their own weapons on a path Joker knows will lead straight to his left eyeball.

“Nearest exit, sweetheart,” he says, clipped.

The hostage sucks in a breath, quaking in his arms. “B-behind you, a little to the right. You’ll have to walk through the offices.”

Joker’s blood runs cold. His shot friend has stopped moving beneath the heavy body of the officer holding him down. Someone is shouting at him, giving him orders he can’t hear. His heart has stopped beating, and he’s sure he’s dead. Joker’s eyes drop over the hostage’s shoulder. She’s wearing a name tag, right above her heart. In her hand, a plastic cup of iced coffee, in the other, an unwrapped straw. Coming back from break. The logo on the cup is from across the street. He reads the name tag upside down.

Nothing makes sense.

It’s the Tower of motherfucking Babylon.

“Don’t hurt me,” Sophie whispers.

Joker recoils, taking her back with him, because how could she ever think he would? He’d hurt anyone in the world, Thomas Wayne, Murray Franklin, his own mother,  _ himself _ , but not her. Never, never her.

Sophie drops her drink, ice and brown liquid splashing over their shoes.

“Joker,” the cop he shot in the chest calls. He’s standing in the middle of the floor, both hands raised. One holding his gun, pointed skyward. The other holding nothing, an offer of peace. The others shepherd the rest of the civilians out the front doors like Border Collies and sheep. His friends are in cuffs, tommy guns abandoned without releasing a single round. “You don’t have to do this. Let her go. She's done nothing to harm you.”

But Joker remembers soft smiles and laughs so quiet they could be breath, warm fingers tracing his spine and cupping his jaw, lips and eyes and a kiss that can’t possibly be anything other than fiction.

_ You're so funny, Arthur. _

“Please,” Sophie continues. “I have a little girl. She needs me.”

And it’s a slap to the face, a punch to the gut.

Somehow, he forgot she was a mother.

Joker tugs her to the door with him; a shot rings in his ears, and a new hole is in the wall by his head. Sophie shrieks and shouts something he doesn’t understand, because the cop just _fired_ at them, now, with a _hostage_ in Joker’s arms, and he is _furious_ _ . _

“When I get out of here, so will you,” he hisses into her hair.

Another bullet in the wall, and Joker spins, fumbles with the door, slides through it. He slams it shut, Sophie breathing quickly. There’s a filing cabinet next to the frame—he grips it and it topples over in front of the door, spilling papers and manila envelopes on the hard carpet. Joker takes Sophie by the wrist and pulls her to the back, growls, “Which way?”

“L-left.”

The thought occurs to him: Sophie could be leading him into a trap.

Maybe he deserves it.

But there is no trap awaiting him at the back of the bank, just a small, empty alley between two tall walls, and the echo of sirens at one end. He heads for the other. Joker glances around the corner, straining his ears for the shouts of the officers. They’re coming in hot from both inside the building and down the street, and there’s no time to waste. He dashes forward, sticking to shadow and hugging curves. It’s hot—he rips the rubber mask from his face, gulping in a fresh breath of air.

Sophie must catch a glance of his painted skin beneath it, because she whispers, “ _ Oh my god _ .”

Everyone knows his face by now.

Joker never quits his break-neck pace, not even when the factory looms in the distance, and Sophie starts tugging to get away, babbling incoherently. He still has to cross the bridge to return to his home on the metal observation balcony. To his family. Joker halts, heels of his shoes grinding the pebbles beneath him into dust.

“You have to let me go,” Sophie says. “Please. You have to. I know what going across this bridge means. I know what going inside that building means.”

Joker lets her wrist slip through his fingers, just like that. “Yeah, I know. You can go.”

Sophie’s breathing stops. “What? You're serious?”

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t trust himself to.  _ I’ve let you go before _ . She knows just as much about him now as she did then. Joker crosses the bridge, pauses midway, and turns around. He fishes the last gun from his trouser pocket, bends down, and slides it across the ground to her. It fumbles to a stop four feet from the coffee-stained points of her shoes. She stares at it.

“Careful,” Joker says. “It’s loaded. Get a new job. Move to Metropolis. Maybe then you won’t have to use it.”

He leaves then, because if he looks back he won’t see Sophie picking up the gun. He’ll see Arthur Fleck, black pistol in his hands. Arthur Fleck, lying on his side on the moving subway. Arthur Fleck, pushing a pillow over his mother’s face. He doesn’t want to see that.

Joker killed him for a reason.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also sorry i haven't had time to copyedit this one yet, forgive me for my typo sins k thanks bye


	5. Snitch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello it's been a minute but I've been busy writing other things that I get paid for and therefore require a little more of my attention XD ENJOY BITCHES

Gary is the snitch.

It’s obvious by the hurried way his personal affects have been cleared from the observation balcony inside the factory, from the troubled looks on his family’s faces, the shock, the hint of rage. The moment Joker descends the stairs they swarm around him, smelling like body odor and unbrushed teeth, a fetor he’s all too familiar with.

“We tried to stop him.”

“Fucking asshole.”

“He betrayed you!”

Joker holds up a hand, and their babbling ceases, cutting into pin-drop silence. “If any of you get word of Gary, tell me. I’ll kill him.”

They erupt into cheers.

What Joker doesn’t tell them is he gets it. There had to be a reason for Gary’s increasing discomfort, the way his eyes would flicker away when Joker laughed or sang or danced, all those nights he spent talking to himself to see if anyone would listen. He guesses Gary finally did.

Too bad it’s thirty-two years too late.

For the rest of the evening Joker smokes a pack and a half of shitty, off-brand cigarettes. He can afford the good kind with the camel on them, but he buys these when he wants to punish himself. When the constant stream of smoke uncruling from his lips and nostrils finally settles into a lazy fog above his head, Joker flicks his last stick off the metal railing. It falls, slowly, like a comet crashing to earth, unsnuffed end glowing orange. It lands in a puddle.

A piercing, shattering cry echoes toward the ceiling as the nightly fucking begins anew. Joker watches for a while, intrigued. He’s always been fascinated by sex; voyeurism is strange, but not as detached as watching porn or flipping through magazines. It’s more intimate to see it for himself, live, even if he isn’t an active participant. It makes it easier to imagine himself between them, around them, inside them. Sweat isn't visible in the grainy pixles of a television screen, but life is always high definition.

Sometimes, the men and women will make eye contact with him during the act. Some look away, but he figures those people consider their eyes meeting a genuine mistake. The ones that do it on purpose, however, _really _intrigue him. They sneak peeks whenever they can, and especially when they come. Among his fans, and even more commonly in the circles that gave up everything to live with him in the factory, these people have something of an obsession with Joker. They live him, breathe him. They've _got_ to be freaks, if they look up to someone like him.

Even so, Joker doesn’t mind; he isn’t free of the sin of covetousness.

There’s one woman in particular—Georgia, he thinks is her name. Georgia arrived at the factory one day, a single grimy pillow under one arm, a wad of cash in the other hand, and a face painted the same style as the clown masks. She’d shaken Joker’s hand, told him how much she admired him, and never once blinked.

She’s some kind of painter; she leaves the factory for hours at a time, returning with stolen shopping carts filled with legally purchased oil paints, brushes, canvas. She must have painted Joker six times by now. Her work adorns the walls, like a museum of just him, captured in bold strokes of reds and blues and greens. They're impressive. She manages to make Joker look like a leader; someone confident, someone free. It's how he's always wanted to be, and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't touched.

Georgia's crowning piece hangs upstairs on his own wall. It's the size of a full-length mirror, touches the ceiling and the floor. It's a life-sized piece, and Joker spends hours staring at it, marveling at the precision and detail. It's himself, standing atop the crushed police cruiser, lit torches all around him, the city on fire. He's smiling, blood and paint smeared across his lips.

He put on a happy face, and brought joy to the world. Just like his mother wanted.

Painting-Joker's arms are raised, his body sculpted into a striking pose.

When he sees it for the first time, it's half-finished. His family gathers around the large canvas, whispering in hushed voices. Georgia is gone; buying more red paint, they told him. She'd ran out. Joker sees the painting, not yet completed, and he knows Georgia was in the crowd that day, watching him. There are no photos in the papers from this. She saw it with her own eyes.

Currently, Georgia is down on the gutted assembly floor, atop a platform Joker’s family painstakingly built to keep them off the cold, concrete ground. They piled it high with mattresses, blankets and sheets that are weeks past their wash date. Georgia lies on her back, elevated by a tangled web of pillows and bodies. She, and the other five people in the middle of the orgy, are naked. There’s another woman with her head between Georgia’s legs, hands gripping Georgia’s thighs. She’s right where Joker can see her; the focal point of the writhing, sweaty bodies, the loudest voice among the cries of pleasure.

Georgia suddenly hitches, tosses her long auburn hair back, eyes locking onto Joker as she comes. She’s lost for a moment, chest heaving, as she descends. Then she smirks at him, flips herself and the other woman over, and returns the favor.

Joker would have to be an idiot not to get  _ that  _ message.

He considers it—Georgia is pretty. Gorgeous, really. She’s talented, too, and it seems she never needs Joker’s money to help supply her day-to-day expenses. He has a sneaking suspicion that Georgia has even donated to his campaign, although Gary always handled donations, so he has no way of checking.

Thinking about Gary makes him think about the heist, the obvious set-up. The men he robbed the bank with are either rotting in jail or dead, now. The teller he pointed the gun at, scarred.

And Sophie.

Shit. Sophie.

Joker jams his hand into his trouser pockets, jostling the last cigarette from the package. He lights it, tosses the crumpled box into the puddle, and before he can stop himself grouses, “Georgia.”

The noise stops. She stares at him, looking over her shoulder, blue eyes wide. He’s never called someone up to him before. He tries not to lose his nerve, beckons her with a flick of his fingers, turns away, and sinks into a couch pushed against the far wall.

Not a minute later Georgia ascends the metal steps, barefoot, wrapped in a mid-thigh sheer robe. But  _ fuck,  _ she is pretty, especially when she smiles at him like she is now, small fingers tucking loose strands of hair behind her ears. Joker takes a drag.

“You wanted to see me?” Georgia asks. Her voice is honey and sugar, too sweet.

Joker exhales, blinks through the white. “You had a fun evening?”

“It was fine,” Georgia says, eyes knowing. “Nothing to write home about. Can I help you with something, Your Majesty?”

Joker snorts. “Aw, don’t call me that.”

“Why not?” She steps forward, and he can see her nipples through the gap in her robe. “You are a king, aren’t you? The King of Crime.”

It strikes him, then; the graffiti across the city. His face, a crown on his head. Maybe Georgia has been doing more than buying art supplies. He feels more like the King of Dumbasses, right now. Joker takes another drag to stall. “Why’d you come to live here, Georgia? Why drop everything you had going and live in a filthy glue factory with a bunch of horny strangers?”

“I thought that was obvious,” Georgia laughs. She opens her mouth, pauses, bites her lip. Georgia drops to her knees at the edge of the couch by Joker’s shined shoes. The textured floor will leave indents in her skin, but she doesn't seem to care. Her fingertips trace the bevel of the button on his fly. She glances up through her eyelashes. “Do you really not know? Should I show you?”

He almost says no.

Joker has never been touched by a woman. He isn’t ashamed of being a virgin, not when lack of feminine attention bothered him less than the lack of real, genuine human connection. It’s why Arthur Fleck cut the torsos out of all the magazines he could find and pasted them into his notes. If he ever cared to try, he could have found anyone willing to have sex with him. Sex was never the issue.

Fondness, it seems, was.

So there’s a lump in his throat as he whispers, “Do you like me, Georgia?”

He sounds like a child, hates that he does. But Georgia moans around him, warm and wet and  _ good so good _ . It’s not exactly a conformation of her affection, but it’s better than nothing. He can pretend, in this moment, that he means something to her. He can pretend that someone sees him for who he is, and despite it, loves him.

Later, Georgia lifts her head, a hand sliding around the back of his neck, tugging him down. He stops them before they can kiss.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says. “I’m saving it for someone special.”

Georgia doesn’t understand when he means—Joker offers no explanation. The memory of his kiss is strong, even when fabricated. If he ever has a  _ real  _ one , something tangible, he’s afraid the illusion will shatter completely. He wouldn’t mind pretending, for the rest of his life, that Sophie Dumond was his first kiss.

It’s not like he’ll ever see her again, anyway.

\--- --- ---

But  _ just to be sure  _ that he’ll never see Sophie again, Joker takes a little look-see into her personal affairs, bribing a few people to confirm addresses, if she’s packing, if she’s long gone by now. To his chagrin, Sophie is exactly where he left her, living in that god-awful complex with the shaky elevator and broken heat, mothball-scented hallways and rat-infested plumbing.

According to Joker’s source, Sophie hasn’t even taken a day off work; she returned to the bank the _next fucking day _and worked a full shift. She dropped her daughter off at school, picked up an iced mocha at the coffee shop across the street, and went right back to her desk. Also according to Joker’s source, Sophie has been visited by several debt collectors over the last week, harassing her on the streets, pounding on her apartment door, once even showing up at the school to speak with her daughter. The collectors don’t visit her at work.

Joker bets the cops have been called once or twice.

When Joker looks in to the debt, he finds it isn’t even in her name—it’s under some asshole called Adam, and upon opening that can of worms, things start to fall into place.

Adam is Sophie’s ex-husband. GiGi’s father. He’s a gambler, a drunk, a piece of shit. Lost a few hundred thousand dollars he didn’t have, filed for bankruptcy, but not before naming the mother of his child as his asset holder. It boils Joker’s blood to think this is the reason Sophie hasn’t taken her daughter somewhere safer, that this is why she didn’t take a day off even when she’d been kidnapped and threatened with a gun. The next time the debt collectors come around, Joker hopes she’ll shoot them. She doesn’t, so Joker does the only logical thing he can.

He pays off Sophie’s debt.

There’s only about 17K left, which is very doable for Joker. It drains his funds considerably, sure, but his wallet will be fat again before he knows it, and with nothing tying her to the bank or the apartment, and by extension, the city, she’ll take her kid and have a better life. Elsewhere.

Joker doesn’t think he’d wish a lifetime of Gotham on his worst enemy.

(Except maybe Thomas Wayne, seeing how that little package tied its own bow.)

As an afterthought, Joker includes a small stipend with his payment; enough for a deposit in any apartment in any other city. She doesn’t have to move to Metropolis, she could move to California, to Arkansas, to Michigan. So long as she moves. His spies inform him that Sophie is aware her debt has been settled, and Joker resigns himself to the fact that, now, it’s really over.

So it surprises the shit out of him when Sophie turns up on his doorstep five days later, head held high, his gun clutched in her white-knuckle grip.

“I’m here to see Joker.”

Her voice rouses him from his half-slumber like a shock of far too many volts. He’d done his face makeup and immediately went down for a few z’s, smearing the left eye, leaving a streak of blue down his cheek. Joker tosses himself from the couch, the metal railing crushing into his diaphragm. It winds him, tears beading in his eyes. He blinks them away, and there she is.

Standing below, surrounded by his family. Tall, confident. The smallest of tremors quivering her jaw. In her free hand is a brown paper bag, crumpled in her fist.

Joker inhales, calms the fervent beating of his heart.

_ She’s no one to you,  _ he reminds himself, and it hurts because it’s true.  _ She’s nothing but a daydream. _

“Okay, folks,” Joker calls, proud that his voice doesn’t waver. “Party’s over. Give her some air.”

They part; he catches sight of Georgia, glancing between them, brow furrowed. Sophie’s eyes are for him only, and he loves that she refuses to show him shes scared. She sucks in a breath. “We need to talk.”

He motions to her. “All right. Come on up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how the hell are these chapters getting longer and longer every time lol


	6. In Flames

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK, BABY
> 
> im sorry it's late and i haven't proofread this chapter, im sorry
> 
> enjoy c:

Sophie eyes a rumpled pair of Joker’s briefs with great disdain. Maybe she regrets coming here. That would be in her best interest. Joker makes no attempt to hide the offending garment, instead flopping down on his ratty, grimy couch and knocking a cigarette loose from a brand new pack.

He should stop smoking. But he won’t.

“Shit. You got a light?” He holds the end out to Sophie. She inhales. Joker retracts. “That’s fine. I’ve got one here somewhere.”

He rummages in a pile of junk, but a  _ clack _ on the little coffee table gives him pause, and he looks up just in time to watch her take her hand off of the gun. It sits there, looking innocent.

“Why did you give me this?”

It’s only been seconds and he’s already acclimated to the sound of her voice. Fuck. It’s gonna hurt like a bitch when she leaves again. Joker kicks his shoes atop the table, knocking the gun sideways. Sophie scrambles for it before it can hit the metal floor. “You look like you want to keep it.” He shrugs. “Here’s some free advice: Never let go of something you know you want.”

Dark rose dusts her pretty cheeks as she tucks the gun into a small handbag. “Nothing is free.”

“Some things are free.”

“Joker,” Sophie says, and he loves her for how her voice sounds. Strong, sure, powerful. Unafraid. “Who am I to you?”

It surprises him, that question. He’d been expecting almost anything else. Not this.

The answer, the truth, fills his mind before he can stop it—she’s a hand on his knee while his mother is in the hospital, a kind smile and genuine, quiet laughter at his first live show, a brush of lips in his darkest, most desperate moment covered in blood and paint and politics.

He’s  _ still  _ covered in that.

Joker finds a match. It lights on the third strike. “I could ask you the same question. But here you are at  _ my  _ house, with a gun in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other, and you ask me who you are to  _ me?  _ Aren’t we strangers to each other?”  _ _ He takes a drag, lets the smoke hang in the air along with his words.

It makes his lungs hurt—he really ought to stop smoking.

Sophie says, “Strangers don’t pay off seventeen-thousand dollars of debt.”

Joker guesses they don’t. Although; Thomas Wayne was all but a stranger to him his entire life, and Penny Fleck never stopped believing that once he read her letters, everything would change. But, Joker reminds himself, fairy tales are not reality, and sometimes your mother is a liar and your dad is a dick and you’re just as insane as everyone thinks you are.

Sometimes.

“We’re not perfect strangers, Sophie. We met at the bank.”

She unclenches her teeth. “You know my name.”

“Hard to pay of seventeen-thousands dollars of debt and not know the debtor's name.”

“I don’t need charity from a murderer,” Sophie continues. “You may know my name but you don’t know  _ me.  _ This isn’t right. This is wrong.”

For a single, awful moment, Joker pictures killing her. It wouldn’t be hard. A quick shove over the railing, an even quicker fall. She wouldn’t know it happened. He thinks he’d rather throw himself from the heavens, and the ferocity of this truth strikes his heart, grips his stomach, rattles his brain. Joker might be sick.

He sucks down another lungful of smoke, and his nerves calm. “Look, lady. You can believe anything you want, yeah? I’m just a guy in a clown suit with a trigger-happy finger and occasionally generous tendencies. Why don’t you leave it at that and get the fuck out of my house before my family invites you to an orgy?”

She blinks at that, caught off-guard. Then she swallows, and tosses the crumpled paper bag at him. Joker misses—a dozen stacks of bills spill across his lap, filling it with green. Joker stares at them.

“It’s only three-hundred dollars. It’s all I could get right now.”

“Three-hundred dollars for what?”

“To pay you back. It was going to settle my debt anyway, you may as well take it. I’ll have more next month.”

“I don’t want your money—”

“What makes you think I want yours?”

Carefully, Joker sets the bag of cash aside. “Consider the seventeen grand a gift. You can’t tell me you seriously like Gotham. Take your three hundred and buy ferry tickets across the water.”

“To Metropolis?”

Joker grins. “I hear it’s not nearly such a shithole there.”

Then Sophie surprises him again by saying, “Why don’t you go there?”

He wants to. Used to dream about it. Moving to the big, shiny city with Thomas Wayne’s finally cashed check in Penny’s dress pocket, picking out a nice, quiet home in the suburbs, going to private school, seeing a therapist that actually wants to talk to him and being able to fill his prescriptions without scraping through his empty pockets for change. That gets him thinking: What would happen if he started taking his medication again? For the first time in his life, he can afford it.

Joker offers Sophie a drag from the cigarette, but she just stares at it, so he pretends she did it anyway and savors the feeling of the paper on his lips with his next puff. “Arrangements for travel are a bit of a roadblock when I look like this,” he finally says.

“It’s paint.”

“It’s who I am.”

Her eyes narrow. “Looks like a mask, to me.”

He imagines killing her again, and the nausea hits him so hard he nearly throws up. He really needs her to leave, even if he doesn’t want her to go. Below, a feminine voice echoes a breathy moan that fills the ceiling and tickles their ears. It’s Georgia—Joker recognizes the cadence. Color comes back to Sophie’s cheeks and Joker shrugs. “I wasn’t kidding about the orgy invite.”

She steps toward the stairs. “Take the money.”

“I’ll just send it back to you if you leave it here.”

“Then I’ll drop it off again.”

He tosses the bag at her—she catches it. “Then I guess I’ll see you later. Bye, Sophie. Watch your step on the way down.”

Sophie doesn’t move. She licks her lips, and he follows it with his eyes, hates himself for it. “You’re not telling me the truth. That scares me.”

And finally, an admittance of fear. Fear is an ugly, hateful thing. It’s what Joker feels when he thinks of his family finally realizing he’s nothing more than a usurper and leaving him to die alone in the factory. It’s what grips him from nightmares about pillows and being punched in the face in bathrooms and the roundness of Bruce Wayne’s eyes as the butler pulled him away from the gate. It’s a reminder of the Murray Franklin Show and the gun he snuck into his pocket, wondering how he’ll look lying dead in the guest’s spot next to Dr. Sally.

It’s how he feels when he thinks of his death meaning absolutely nothing to anyone.

It’s the idea that Arthur will come back to life if Joker isn’t very careful around Sophie fucking Dumond.

He licks his lips; they taste like paint. “I don’t mean any harm.”

He sees it in her eyes—she believes him. “Why me?”

“I dunno. Felt bad for making you spill your coffee.”

“If you have enough disposable income to pay off almost twenty-thousand dollars in debt for a stranger, you should use it to help the less fortunate in the city.”

He laughs at this. What the hell does she think he’s been doing? Below, Georgia’s moans quiet.

“I mean it. If you really are for the people like your crazy followers say you are, you’d  _ do  _ something to make an actual change.”

“I can’t help every single person in Gotham, sweetheart. I live in a factory; I’m not rolling in cash. Besides, it’s my money.”

“That’s selfish.”

_ “Most things are.” _

He’s starting to regret letting her upstairs. If his family heard how Sophie was talking to him, they’d rip her apart. He needs to send her home. He stands.

“Nice of you to visit. Next time I’d appreciate it if you phone ahead. Bye, now.”

Then Sophie shocks the hell out of him a third time by saying, “I’ll be your accountant.”

He stares at her, stupidly.

Sophie chews on her lip. “I don’t work for free. Pay me the amount I make at the bank, and I’ll balance your books.”

“You sound like you have a condition.”

“A few. First, if I determine you have wiggle room in your budget then you’ll use that money to help people.”

“Done.”

Fuck. He shouldn’t be agreeing to this.

“Second. I’m going to work up here and not down on the ground floor. I don’t want to be bothered by any of your… followers.”

“Done.”

“Third.” Sophie takes a deep breath. “I know you must have found out. About my ex-husband.”

Now  _ there’s  _ someone Joker doesn’t feel nauseated at the idea of killing. He raises a brow. “What about dear old Adam Dumond?”

She flinches—actualy fucking flinches—at his name. “That’s a personal detail of my life. Don’t ask me any questions about anything else. I’m offering to do this for you because you changed my life overnight, and because I think I can do some good here. That’s all.”

_ We’re not friends,  _ otherwise. Whatever. Joker can always look into how she’s doing in secret and not tell her. (Although it occurs to him seconds later that Sophie doesn’t want him involved in her daughter’s life, and he can’t fault her for that. He barely wants to be involved in his own life, half the time.)

“Done.” Joker holds out a hand, hoping she’ll drop her guard and shake it.

She doesn’t. Sophie clears her throat, eyes on her feet. “I’ll be in Monday at six. No, Six-thirty. Have any financial documents you have ready. You already have my bank information.”

He lowers his hand, but it’s easy to imagine her skin on his. He’s done it before. “Welcome to the family, Sophie.”

When she’s gone, he calls Georgia upstairs and loses himself in whatever she wants to do to him. Georgia doesn’t ask any questions, even though she can see the curiosity in her eyes. Well, Georgia  _ does  _ ask questions.  _ (“Is this good? Do you like it like this? Want me to do it faster? Do you want to come in my mouth?”) _

The first time Joker tried a cigarette he was fourteen—Penny kept them in her purse and told him she didn’t use them. But Joker could smell the tobacco hanging in the air when he came home from school. There’s not an earthly amount of lemon juice that can cover the acrid scent of nicotine.

He nicked one from Penny’s purse one evening when she fell asleep on the couch watching soap operas. Joker took it into the bathroom of their shitty, tiny apartment and turned on the fan. He just watched the patterns of the smoke lift from the end of the roll for a while, curious about the taste. At the time, he hoped it would taste better than it smelled.

Then he took his first drag—and immediately hacked up a lung, resulting in the lit end dropping to his shirt and burning a hole in the fabric, and almost his skin. In his scramble to extinguish the butt, and amidst the burning in his lungs and throat, his manic laughter had woken Penny from her slumber. And half the building.

Every time Joker tried it after that, he did so with the deep-set knowledge that they could burn him. Kill him, even. Pity they’re so addicting.

Joker gets the distinct sense that Georgia is a lot like his cigarettes.

He should really stop smoking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if u like my shit and have disposable income, you can read my novel Heavy Lies the Crown at le link below. your support means i get to eat. it's a futuristic fantasy about a king that has to find a wife but falls in love with his bodyguard. it's also hella gay.  
https://tapas.io/series/Heavy-Lies-the-Crown


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